22 A HARD DA Y AT THE. OFFICE. I RECENTLY worked in an office where they had a number of those signs reading "Think," the motto of the International Business Machines Corporation, which so many other busi- ness firms seem to be adopting. The signs hecame almost at once a bone of contention between my employer and me, though not because I was not re- sponsive to them; I have always reacted unqualifiedly to wall in junctions, espe- cially the monosyllabic kind. Confront- ed, for example, with the exhortation "Smile," my face becomes wreathed in an expression of felicity that some people find unendurable. The "Think" signs, one of which was visible from my desk, so I saw it ever} time I raised my head, were equally effective. As a consequence, by midmornlng of my first day on the job I was so immersed in rumination that the boss, a ruddy, heavyset fellow named Harry Bagley, paused on his way past my desk, evi- dently struck hy a remote and glazed look in my eye. "\'/hat's the matter with you?" he asked. "I was just thInking," I said, stirring from my concentration. "V\"-hat about r " "Zeno's paradoxes," I answered. "The eight paradoxes by which he tries to discredit the belief in plurality and motion, and which have come down to us in the writings of Aristotle and Simplicius. I was recalling particularly the one about Achilles and the tortoIse. You remember it. i\.chilIes can never catch up with the tortoise for, while he traverses the distance between h is starting -. , -- pOInt and that of the tortoise, the tortoise ad- vances a certain distance, and while Achilles traverses this distance, the tor- toise makes a further aJ vance, and so on ad infinitum. Consequently, Achilles may run ad infinitum without over- taking the tortoise. Ergo there is no . " . motIon. "A fat hell of a lot of good this is doing us," Bagley said. "Oh, I know Zeno's old hat and, as you say, fruitless from a practical point of view," I said. "But here's the thought I want to leave with vou. It's amazing how many of our values are still based on thIs classic logic, and so maybe the semanticists, under Korzybski and later , Cí ""'"-- {2.D Hayakawa, have been right in hammer- ing home to us a less absolutistic ap- proach to things." "Yes, well, get some of this work off your desk," Bagley saiJ, gesturing at a cluster of documents that had been thickening there since nine o'clock. "Right," I said, and he bustled off. I FELL to with a will, and by noon was pretty well caught up. But as I sat down at my desk after lunch, my eye fel] on the admonitory legend domi- nating the opposite wall, and I was soon again deep in a train of reflections, which, while lacking the abstruseness of my mornIng cogitations, were neverthe- less not wholly without scope and erudi- tion. :My face must have betrayed the straIn of application once more, for Bagley stopped as he had earlIer. "Now whatr" he said. I put down a paper knife I had been abstractedly bending. "I've been thinking," I said, "that the element of the fantastic in the graphic arts is, historically speaking, so voluminous that it's presumptuous of the Surrealists to pretend that they have any more than given a contemporary label to an established vein. Take the chimeri- cal detail in much FlemIsh and Renais- sance painting, the dry, horrifying apparitions of Hieronymus Bosch-" "Get your money," Bagley said. "But whyr What am I doing hut what that sign saysr" I pro- tested, pointing to it. "That sign doesn't mean this kind of think- ing," Bagley said. "What kind, then r What do you want me to think aboutr" I asked. "Think about your work. ThInk ahout the product. Anv- thing." "i\.lI nght, I'll try that," I said. "I'll try thinking about the product. But which one r" I added, for the firm was a wholesale-food company that handled many kinds of foods. I was at pains to remind Bagley of this. "So shall I think of food in general, or some particular item r" I asked. "Or some phase of dis- tribution r " "Oh, good God, I don't know," Bagley said impatiently. "Think of the special we're pushing," he said, and made off. The special we were pushing just ,..-'":. ------ ,...-;. - ---- -- then was packaged mixed nuts, un- shelled. The firm had been trying to as- certaIn what proportions people liked in mixed nuts-what ratio of walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, and so on-as re- flected in relative sales of varying assort- ments that the company had been simul- taneously putting out in different areas. I didn't see how any thinking on my part could help reach any conclusion about that, the more so because my work, which was checking and collating credit memoranda, offered no data along those lines. So I figured the best thing would be for me to dwell on nuts in a general way, which I did. S H 0 R TL Y after four 0' clock, I was aware of Bagley's bulk over me, and of Bagley looking down at me. "Well r " he saId. I turned to him in my swivel chair, crossing m) legs. "Nuts, it seems to me, have a quality that makes them unique among foods," I said. "I'm not thinking of theIr more obvious aspect as an autumnal symbol, their poetic association with festive pe- riods. They have something else, a je nr sa'lS quoi that has often haunted me while eating them hut that I have never qUIte been able to pin down, despite that effort of imaginative physical identifi- cation that is the legitimate province of the senses." "You're wearing me thin," Bagley said. "But now I think I've put my finger on the curious quality they have," I said. "Nuts are in effect ed'lble wood." " G " B I . d et your money, ag ey sal . I rose. "I don't understand what you want," I exclaimed. "Granted the ob- servation is a trifle on the precious side, is that any reason for firing a man? Give me a little time." "You've got an hour till quitting time. Your money'lI be ready then," Baglev saId. M y money was ready by qUIttIng time. As I took it, I reflected that my wages from this firm consisted almost exclusively of severance pay. Bagley had beefed about having to fork over two weeks' compensation, hut he forked it over. I got another job soon afterward. I still have it. It's with an outfit that doesn't expect you to smile or think or anything like that. Anyhow, I've learned my lesson as far as the second is concerned. If I'm ever again confronted with a sign telling me to think, I'll damn well think twice before I do. -PETER DE VRIES